Tag - A Technothriller (25 page)

The twin brother or maybe sister of my steering column rose out of the cockpit floor and extended from below the front shield, the extension of the twin grips easing its way towards a position above Mariko’s lap. The black grips, Devpad and drilled out titanium column matched the matt black leg outers and chromed cloth outer tank top she had on. She stretched out her arms and flexed her muscles. I started to feel alarmed, hoping she wasn’t thinking about driving the Titan out of here.

Mariko took hold of the steering grips and hit a button on the center Dev pad with her right thumb. The door slid shut with a quick hiss and metallic solid clunk. There was a slight whirring sound as Mariko adjusted her seat, going to a half recline with the steering grips still in her hands. Neither of us said anything – I wanted to see what she would do. She fiddled with the angle of her seat and then, appearing satisfied, reached up and pulled the rear and side view Devscreen down from the roof above her, the lobby behind us displayed in clear color and infrared. She took a last look at that and, reaching out with her left hand, tapped another button on the Devpad. She reached again and adjusted the black mic that coiled out of the roof above us like a dark snake about to strike.

She said, “Systems check – go.”

A Devscreen in the wide expanse of dark grey carbon fiber came to life and the liner’s systems rolled up in a slow reading scroll. Mariko thumbed the Dev a couple of times and the scroll speeded up. All the lights in the cockpit buttons blinked green three times and she said, “Go manual, autocol on,” and the Titan starting moving at a walking pace over the polished cement floor of the lobby. I thought about putting on the safety webbing but decided against it – she might not think that was funny, and at this speed I had nothing to worry about. We exited the Envplex and had to wait while the Travway cleared enough space for us to enter. The Travway radar came up on the Devscreen, replacing the systems check, and flashed green.

Mariko twisted the grip with what was almost a snarl of her lips and the Titan leapt out of the on-ramp, thrusting me against my seat. She engaged the safety webbing for both of us as she accelerated through one hundred and forty kilos taking us within two mins to the causeway. She had to drop our speed as we came to the causeway with the evening trav just starting, but she swiftly pulled over to the exit lane and took the exit ramp that lead to the wharf and warehousing area along the strait. Steering through a curving right corner and then cutting speed down to a crawl, she eased the Titan into a storm drain outlet that sloped down to the strait in between two warehouses.

I was sure the little Chinese girl from EasyRent didn’t have this route in mind. There was a fairly strong stream of water flowing in the storm drain as New Singapore sluiced out the afternoon’s rain, and Mariko edged the Titan down the ramp. A flashing red alarm button went off accompanied by a loud urgent repeated buzz. Mariko calmly reached over and hit the squawking button. The front end of the liner floated free on the water and she gave the throttle a quick twist, pushing the back end of the craft into the water.

A schematic display on the center Dev showed the Titan’s fat six wheels retracting into its belly and laying flat, as the current swept us sideways. The left-side Dev showed images of the hydro planes extending and the Travway radar switched over to radar of the shipping and other craft that were traversing the strait. It was all big container ships with a few lighters and ferries scurrying about. The props fully extended and locked, Mariko twisted the throttle, and the nose of the Titan rose and then settled as she countered the sideways drift and then took us up in a series of smooth shudders on the small waves of the strait to hydroplane speed. The hull dragged itself up and clear of the sea beneath us.

She turned the craft gently, powering up all the way through the turn in a wide, right-hand arc, cutting underneath the stern of a huge anchored seahauler. I glanced at the rear Devscreen set into the roof and saw hardly a ripple behind us. The rain had stopped, and through the cloud cover, a dark golden sun tipping into scarlet found the center of the rear view Devscreen as we headed east out of the strait at ninety kilos.

I released myself from the safety webbing when our course straightened out and, steadying myself with a hand on Mariko’s seat, walked down the steps behind into the cabin below.

I stepped over to the fridge and got out a couple of cold beers. I also checked to see that the food I’d ordered was in there and it looked like EasyRent had done their job well. Then I turned and went back up the stair to the cockpit, ships’ rusted sides gleaming gold with the sun at our backs as we flew down the strait. Mariko had both hands on the grips so I twisted the top off her beer and fitted it into the holder on the side of her Siteazy.

She looked up with a smile and taking her left hand off the grip gave mine a squeeze. “Thanks for not asking,” she said. She picked up her beer with an elbow bent back to reach it, and raised the drink in salute. “Great choice – the Titan I mean – I hope you don’t mind me coming by sea.”

“No, it’s a great idea, but I had no idea you knew how to handle one of these things. Where did you learn to handle a rig this size?”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Jonah. Let me get us out of here and tracking north up the coast in the open sea and then we’ll talk. OK?”

I sat back down in my seat and swiveled to face her, kicking off my shoes. Curling my legs under me I rested an elbow on a knee, the Tiger beer dangling from my fingers swaying to the motion of the craft’s plunge through the darkening sea.

“Sure,” I said and smiled softly at her, not understanding the look of sadness that haunted her green eyes. A cloud hastened the departure of the dying sun behind us as the craft pushed into the darkness in front and the lights of the Devscreen and the buttons in the Dev consoles illuminated the inside of the cockpit, casting everything in a green light.

Mariko banked the craft left and the GPS showed our track as running NNE at about fifteen degrees. She said, “Go to Autopilot at eighty kilos.” The pitched whine coming from the engines behind us dropped a level as the craft seemed to raise its nose a fraction against a horizon now rapidly fading to black. She pushed the steering column out of her lap and her seat rose to a sitting upright position. Then she hit a button on the side of the Siteazy and her seat turned her to face me.

Holding the bottle with two fingers and a thumb and tilting her head right back to force the flow to full, Mariko took a long pull of her beer, looking at me all the time. She stopped gulping, removed the bottle from her lips and exhaled forcefully.

“I’ve wanted to tell you what I am going to tell you since the first time I woke up with you in your Env. It’s just that then I wasn’t sure if it was legal for me to tell you, and when, after I’d returned to my contribution I knew it was, then everything was so perfect that I couldn’t find a way to fit it in without spoiling that perfectness. This evening I’ve realized that there will never be a perfect time to tell you what I have to say, which makes the perfect time right now.”

She put the beer back in its temporary home in the holder on the Siteazy, and reaching across, her arms fully extended, placed her hands on my leg. She looked at me from under her fringe, and took a deep breath.

“I can’t live a lie, no matter how convenient it may be and no matter how beautiful the circumstances. I can’t do it, and right now I’m living a lie and I’ve got to put it right. Are you ready for this?”

I was scared by the intensity of her words and my mind was reeling, tripping through possibilities of what she could have lied about. But I hid this and with an inscrutable expression, said, “Yes, I’m ready.”

She breathed out heavily again and straightened up, looking me in the eye, withdrawing her hands from my leg and placing them on her own knees again.

“I didn’t meet you on the Moon by accident. I was flown to Shackleton to meet you and ordered to engage with you. On the flight home, I knew you’d been given a concocted Truth Treatment and I questioned you under orders from Senior Agent Sharon Cochran. I am contributing in SOE as I have told you. The reason I was in such a bad mood this afternoon was that Cochran had just warned me before we met up that since you were no longer attached to UNPOL, I could not reveal any UNPOL specific information to you. I told her that from a legal standpoint I could, since at the time I was cleared from the task of questioning you and you were cleared of the Blue Notice, you and I were both UNPOL-related and therefore both had access to the information.

“That’s it. That’s my lie. It’s a beautiful lie, because it led me to you, but I can’t live with it and with you at the same time. One of you has to go. I hope it’s the lie.”

My mouth had fallen open while she was talking and it remained that way as I looked at her, my head resting in the palm of my hand and the beer swaying gently to and fro. I didn’t say anything, couldn’t think of anything to say. All of a sudden I had no idea who she was.

“Is Mariko your real name?” I finally asked.

“Yes. Look, it was for those hours on the flight back from Shackleton only and my brief was to question you about your activities on the Moon. You set off an alarm in the trace center – it was the link between the Nineveh you booked and the Nineveh in the interview. The transcribe matched the two, but it wasn’t spotted until you were already at Shackleton and so they sent me up to intercept and question you. I didn’t know about the Truth Treatment until we were on the craft and then I received the order through my Devstick.”

I tilted my head to stare at the ceiling, resting it on an arm folded behind me as I took a long pull of my beer. I breathed out heavily and let the bottle drop by my side. My voice flat I turned to her and said, “Did the lie stop when we woke up together?”

Mariko looked at me as a tear rolled from her left eye. Her voice, caught on the edge of a sob, said, “The lie stopped at the Lev port on Changi.”

After replaced the beer in its holder, I reached out with the same hand and held it in the space between us, palm upward, little finger curled in. She took my hand and I said, “Well that’s all right then.”

Mariko sobbed out loud and came out her seat as if ejected from it, throwing herself lengthways on me, her arms encircling my neck as her tears fell on my throat. I pulled my hands from behind my head and placed them on the sides of her face, lifting her gently to look at me.

“Please don’t lie to me ever again,” I said, gazing deep into her tear-brimmed eyes.

Rising up on one elbow, she wiped tears away with her forearm, smiled at me and sobbed at the same time. I leaned forward and kissed her. She opened her mouth and probed with her tongue into mine, holding the sides of my face now and pulling me into her hard as if trying to swallow me. She disengaged her mouth and sat up on me with a wild look in her eye, her hair in disarray as she reached down with her hands and yanked up the chrome tank top.

Chapter 22

Auld Lang Syne

The Marq V, Penthouse Env, Sir Thomas’s New Singapore Residence

Tuesday 31 December 2109, 11:50pm +8 UTC

In the bedroom of his Penthouse at the exclusive Marq V Envplex, Sir Thomas stood on the raised Dias next to his enormous sleeper, and looked out over the airships, ocean liners and private yachts tethered to spine-like piers and floating off moorings in the dark of the harbor.

There was very little traffic in the harbor now that the hour was approaching midnight. It wasn’t raining for a change, and he told the door to the balcony to open, stepping out into the warm night and walking to the railing. The view was spectacular, looking out over the South China Sea, the ships with all their lights on in celebration of the New Year, lighting up the pitch black sea, the Moon a sliver of silver. He took in a deep breath of the warm sea air, although at this height the taste of salt was minimal – it had to be imagined.

In another five minutes, his image would be broadcast for the world to see, and the culmination of a decade’s worth of planning would be put into motion. The hole cards were dealt, the river down, and now the betting and bluffing would begin. He clenched his fists in anticipation, turned, and walked along the balcony until he had reached the door to the living room which had been set up for the broadcast.

Dressed in a blue shirt with the collar open at the neck and an old fashioned woolen jumper over khaki pants, complete with suede brogues on his feet and no socks, his ankles felt cool. He went indoors, sitting at the far end of a beige sofa. He checked his image in the Devscreen opposite him and rubbed his cheeks to put some color into them, a rosiness that led to the kind ‘Uncle Tom’ image that they wanted to portray.

He looked at the time on his Devstick and then put it away and faced the camera Dev, smiling. A timer in the camera Devscreen opposite him counted down to midnight and a red light went on at top of the camera.

“Happy New Year, my fellow humans, and welcome to year 2110. I have chosen this time to announce my resignation from the post of Director of UNPOL. I requested that my resignation be accepted by the Board of Governors and they have graciously acceded to my wish. I have requested only that I may be allowed to perform one last task: that of catching and stopping the terrorists who have sought to cast our world back into darkness with their actions in Paris and New Manhattan. My promise to the family and friends of those who were lost in those cowardly attacks will be honored and in this too the Board of Governors has been gracious in allowing me to achieve this last contribution to you, my fellow humans.

“My years at UNPOL have been happy ones for me and I know that I will leave this fine organization in strong capable hands when the Board of Governors chooses its next Director. It is traditional that the departing Director offers words of advice for his replacement. I am going to break with that tradition. Instead, on behalf of the children of the Oliver Foundation, for their future, I am going to offer my advice to all of you out there on our beautiful planet.